


The battle's won but the child is lost

by pixiedust22



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 02:29:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10548524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pixiedust22/pseuds/pixiedust22
Summary: After the events at Demon's Run, River brings Amy and Rory back home.





	

So she took them home, like he'd asked, leaving them outside their house only moments after they'd last left. They looked like two lost lambs, standing in the street in Leadworth, just staring, Rory dressed as a Roman and Amy still in her medical gown. This could easily become a spectacle should anyone happen to see them.

 

“You should get inside,” she suggested softly.

 

Amy turned around, wide-eyed, as if she'd forgotten where they were, then nodded, her lips tightly pursed together. As they disappeared into the small hallway, River let out the breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding and began tapping coordinates into her vortex manipulator. _Back to Stormcage, Dr Song._

 

“Hey.” Her head snapped up at Rory's voice, his face having appeared again in the doorway. “I'm... I mean... Can we talk?”

 

Oh, and he was her father again, her so very, very _young_ father, with those puppy dog eyes and, _oh_ , how could she refuse? Despite everything within her straining to run away, she stepped inside the house. For a moment they just stood there, Rory by the door and Amy through the entrance to the living room, looking at her with a mixture of suspicion and longing, as though she had all the answers. Which she sort of did, but what was the use of that when it wasn't the answers anyone wanted to hear?

 

Amy finally broke the silence. “I want to know what happens now. I mean, what _happened_.” She pointed a finger to the living room, motioning them through and placing herself in a corner of the sofa, her arm slung over the side and her legs firmly crossed. Rory sat down next to her, a hand calmly stroking his wife's shoulder. River perched herself at the end of the coffee table, clasping her hands together in her lap. “Will he find you?”

 

“The Doctor?”

 

“Of course the bloody _Doctor._ ”

 

“Well... he will...” It wasn't _exactly_ a lie, but close enough to one to make the guilt rise to her throat like bile. He _would_ find baby Melody, or rather she'd find him, two regenerations, a thorough brainwashing, and a lifetime of suffering later.

 

“But not yet, right? Not our baby.”

 

River squirmed. _Spoilers._ Goddamn spoilers. They hadn't done Berlin yet of course, but it had to be close. She could remember this summer quite well, and knew Mels' time was almost up. It would all make sense then, as much sense as it could make anyway, but _damn it._ Telling the Doctor he would understand soon was one thing, after all the times he'd done it to her – from her perspective at least – but Amy and Rory? It was different. They were _hurting,_ and they needed answers. Answers she couldn't give them.

 

Amy looked down, and River could see tears forming in the young woman's eyes. Of course, her silence had been more telling than she'd realised. “Did they...” Amy's voice was quivering. “Did they hurt you?”

 

“Amy...”

 

“I _need_ to know! I'm a mother or... at least I thought I was; five minutes ago I had a baby and now that baby is you, and I know, timey-wimey and all of that, but the fact remains that somewhere, some time, whatever happened to you is happening to that baby I held in my arms and I _have to know_!” Furious tears streamed down her cheeks as she fell back on Rory, sobbing into his arms.

 

“River, please...” After all of that, it was Rory's voice that finally broke her.

 

“They wanted... a weapon,” she began tentatively, her mind racing to figure out a way to answer their questions without inadvertently causing a time paradox. “There are a lot of things you have to do to someone to turn them into that. But there are gaps in my memories of childhood, having spent so much time around the Silence...” She trailed off. It was technically true, although there were still a lot of things she did remember. Mainly in her nightmares. “You know about the orphanage in America, the spacesuit.”

 

“There was a photo of me there,” Amy whispered. “In the orphanage, I mean. Holding Melody. I mean, _you._ ”

 

“Yes. It was the one thing they let me keep,” River nodded.

 

“Why?”

 

“ _Look at your mother, Melody. She loved you. She loved you_ so _much. But_ he _kept her from_ _you. He forced her to abandon you.”_ And oh, how very _clever._ It wasn't the only lie they'd told her about him of course, but to a child, what is the man who commits genocide and destroys entire universes compared to the one who took her parents from her? “I never stopped loving you. They used that.” Her voice was trembling slightly. It worried her, because this was never a good road to go down.

 

They sat in silence for a while, the only sound being Amy's occasional sob and Rory's shaky breath. If only she could have told them that she did spend her childhood with them, albeit in a different way to how they might have imagined, or _wanted,_ but they'd find that out soon anyway. Just perhaps not soon enough. “I'll make some tea,” she finally said, desperate to break the silence.

 

Rory followed her into the kitchen, studied her intently as she filled the kettle with water and set it to boil, gathered cups from the cupboard and placed the waiting teabags into them. If he'd noticed how oddly familiar she seemed to be with their house, he didn't mention it. “You have her eyes, don't you?”

 

“Hm?”

 

“Amy's, I mean. Your eyes. They're similar.”

 

After two regenerations, there was, of course, no conceivable way River could have Amy's eyes. But this wasn't the right time to mention it, so she busied herself pouring the boiling water into the cups.

 

“What I'm wondering is where the hair comes from.”

 

“Huh.” A slight smile tugged at her lips. “Freak of nature, that.” She sighed. “I'm sorry.”

 

He frowned. “About what?”

 

“All of this. Lying to you. Turning you down when you came to me, begging for help.”

 

“You had no choice...”

 

“No.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “No, I didn't. But that doesn't mean I didn't hurt you.”

 

“I only barely knew you existed...” His voice was but a whisper now. “And then you were gone.”

 

“I know.”

 

“And now you're here, but... but...”

 

“But I'm not who you really want. I know. It's OK.” She forced herself to smile, and he looked down at her through the tears, shock written all over his face.

 

“No! River, no. That's not what I meant.”

 

“You want your baby, not a grown-up daughter you don't really know. It's completely understandable.”

 

“Well, yes, I do but... you're the same person.”

 

River wasn't so sure of that. It was the question she could never quite answer. How much of her was _her_ , and how much had simply been beaten into her? The psychopath within had never completely left and she made light of it of course, but in reality it scared her. Knowing that inside, there was still a weapon, waiting to be unleashed. Melody Pond would never have been like that, not simply by nature.

 

When they returned with the teas, Amy had fallen asleep on the sofa, her long red hair spread over the cushions like a halo. Rory gently placed a blanket over her and kissed her forehead. River took this as her cue to leave.

 

“Please don't stay away,” he begged her. “Come back. See us.”

 

And she would. But first they'd see Mels, and they'd see her change. And perhaps then, he'd feel differently. But she'd always come back.

 

She never could refuse him.

 


End file.
